PROMOTING THE
DEVELOPMENT OF A LOCAL ENTREPRENEURIAL CLASS IN KENYA:
THE IMPACT OF AFRICANIZATION POLICIES SINCE THE INDEPENDENCE PERIOD. Kennedy M. Moindi, West Virginia
University History Department, 202 Woodburn Hall, BOX 6303
Morgantown, WV-26505.

THE
AFRICAN BUREAUCRACY AND THE CHALLENGES OF MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP: Meshack
Mairura Sagini.

In the
light of competitive globalization policies of the declining U.S. hegemony, an ascendant and neocolonial EU
and the resurgent but challenging Chinese global influence, the 2007
post-election politics in Kenya
has been interpreted in the context of triangular rivalry for global
governance. Evidently, the scholarly field of managerial leadership in African
countries and their organizations has theoretically and empirically raised
issues concerning the quality of bureaucratic leadership. In other words,
judged by anecdotal perceptions and other objective international yardsticks of
performance, these issues, many of which are controversial reflections of
success and failure, have been analyzed to show the occurrence of evidences of
gross bureaucratic malaise particularly in professional, economic and political
(public) institutions. Based on the literature, neither the first generation of
post independence bureaucrats, nor the current generation of the 1990s and
the new millennium has been able to display elements of transparency, bureaucratic
efficiency and effectiveness and professional accountability. The sources of
bureaucratic corruption inefficiency and professional unaccountability, while
rooted in local cultures, they historically are rooted in colonial,
neo-colonial and contemporary globalism. As a
case study, the underlying causes of the recent post-election crisis in Kenya
may be deeply rooted in colonial and neo-colonial imperialist struggle and
quest for governance and dominance in the global periphery. The implications of
this type of competitive rivalry on Kenya's political system and its
interpretation by the dominantly entrenched and bourgeois class of the Kenyan
elite could have far reaching implications on constitutional, land and
electoral reforms which the 1963 Lancaster House constitution "laughs at
and has failed" to address for almost 50 years. The cumulative effects of
not addressing the reforms on time and the poverty, desperation and joblessness
of the new majority whose ignorance of colonialism and tribalism made them
revolutionary patriots committed to save the nation by using radical, leftist
and popular discontent that threatened the established elites and their global
sympathizers. The old guards were discovered to be pant less. For the survival
of the Republic and its institutions, we need competent, accountable and
transparent bureaucrats as opposed to those whose excessive rent seeking
behavior, political patronage and neo-patrimonialism has influenced them to
provoke our national multicultural social fabric to experience the worst forms
of mayhem, vindictiveness and system disequilibrium. Everybody should support
Kofi Annan and Condoleezza Rice for the reforms and popular democratic
government or else we will have no country called Kenya.

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KENYA'S NUMBER ONE DISEASE IS
POVERTY - Ruth Oniango

People in power
take advantage of people's abject poverty to intimidate them, to confuse them, to
steal from them and to virtually get away with murder. This kind of situation
robs people of their rights and dignity. Experience from the just ended
elections in Kenya
whose presidential results were in dispute, shows that voters were happy with
KSh. 20 (a quarter of a dollar) from a parliamentary candidate. Well,
statistics show that over 70% of Kenyans live below the poverty line, on less
than a dollar a day.

We have a situation
of the haves and have-nots. Candidates come around at election
time in their newly acquired big cars and the money they have, regardless of
how they got it. The money and the rich-man image determine their success at
the ballot box. The money is used to buy votes even from those who call
themselves Christians; money is used to get supporters commit crime by stealing
votes, raping women and children, money has led us to a situation where even
the religious leaders can be bribed.

So where do we get
leaders of integrity? What happens to our children? Where do we get role models
for our children, the future generation? The paper goes ahead to examine ways
of Kenya
possibly ridding itself of corruption, greed, tribalism, lawlessness, and
selfishness and promote a sense of self-worth and integrity ready to be counted
with other countries worth their name in the rest of the world.

During the last
few years,Kenya
has gone through some turbulent times beginning with the controversies that
surrounded the MoU and the subsequent failure of the constitutional
making. Though these difficulties climaxed immediately after the 2007
general election, the situation had been growing gradually from bad to worse
over the years. The proposed study will offer a trend analysis of the
socio-political situation beginning with the conclusion of 1997 general
election until the 2007 post-election violence. Using empirical data, the
study will demonstrate the gradual decline of the socio-political situation in
the country, particularly among the ruling class. The primary data set to
be used in the study will provide information on the number of parliamentary
aspirants during the last three general elections (1997, 2002, and 2007) and
the poverty rates in each of the 210 constituencies. Additional
information including the geographic distribution of high level government
positions, evidence of corruption in high level positions, as well as evidence
of increased urban and rural insecurity in the country will be used. The study
will discuss related issues including the failure of constitutional making,
cosmetic reforms following the 2002 general election, extravagant enumeration
and improved terms of service for the members of parliament which led to a
dramatic increase in completion for political office in 2007, and the usage of
majimbo as a presidential campaign issue in 2007. Attention will also be paid
to the impact of growing poverty levels among the masses and the role this
phenomenon has played in the state of security and in undermining the process
of democratization. The study will offer suggestion for the way forward
if meaningful reforms, development, and stability were to be realized.

The violence that
occurred in Kenya following
the 2007 rigged presidential elections has ignited intense debate on the nature
of the nation-state in Africa. The events
raised new questions about the nature and place of democracy in the
nation-state in Africa. The events revealed
that there are still gaps between elites (citizens) and ordinary people
(subjects), in relations similar to those that existed in the colonial state.
It showed that there are mutual suspicions between ethnic groups. As Mahmood
Mamdani rightly argued in his 1996 book Citizen and Subject, I believe
that the causes of political paralysis in Kenya as in many African states
spring from poor governance, especially corruption. Recent events in Kenya
have indicated that this is still a relevant subject. I therefore, argue that Francis Fukuyama was too quick to praise the triumph of political and
economic liberalism in his The End of History and the Last Man (1992), for neoliberalism
and democracy have failed in Africa. Contrary
to scholars who have argued that ethnicity is to blame for the failure of the
nation-state in Africa, my contention is that it is the ‘eating chiefs’ or
elites who have engineered ethnic differences, for they are the principal
beneficiaries of these differences. My argument is that these ‘eating chiefs’
are out to ensure their continued hold on power by all means, including use of
violence as Mwai Kibaki did in Kenya. In this paper, I will demonstrate that
right from Jomo Kenyatta, through Daniel Moi and now Mwai Kibaki, these eating
chiefs and their cronies have used their positions to loot state resources to
buy support and retain power. They have surrounded themselves with few members
from their ethnic groups, who have formed walls around them. I will examine the
role of political elite or ‘eating chiefs’ in Kenya’s political problems. Since
the 1970s, these eating chiefs have treated government funds and public land as
private property, looted public corporations through cronies, and placed
important institutions in the hands of their associates and members of their
ethnic groups. They have looted the Kenya National Social Security Fund (NSSF)
and the Kenya National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) which they have treated
as milk cows. The rigging of presidential elections and the violence that
followed was part of the conflict between eating chiefs jostling for space at
the high table, and not about the interests of the peasants, or the hoi
poloi.

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PROMOTING THE
DEVELOPMENT OF A LOCAL ENTREPRENEURIAL CLASS IN KENYA:
THE IMPACT OF AFRICANIZATION POLICIES SINCE THE INDEPENDENCE PERIOD: Kennedy M.
Moindi.

Today Kenya boasts of
an ever increasing number of middle and upper class that has mainly evolved
from formal sector employment and the private sector, mainly in the area of
business. Entrepreneurship that transcends both social and economic status is
central in the evolution of a vibrant business sector in the country. At
independence in 1963 resource allocation and entrepreneurial activity in the
country highly favored immigrant communities, mainly the Asians and Europeans.
Although Africans aspired to initiate various businesses in the rural and
emerging urban centers, state regulative policies had consistently discouraged
the emergence of a class of African entrepreneurs. The attainment of
independence in 1963 facilitated the political and economic empowerment of
Africans. State support in the form of credit and control of licensing pursued
under the policies of Africanization, enabled the expansion of African business
in the areas of agriculture, transport, retail and wholesale trade and the
industrial sectors. By 1978, even with continued dominance of foreign capital
in the country, an indigenous class of entrepreneurs had effectively emerged
that was also active in politics. This paper will examine the evolution of this
process and will rely on case studies from Gusiiland in south western Kenya
and other parts of the country. This paper posits that state policies and
individual innovativeness in business are central for the social and economic
transformation of modern society in Africa.

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ANALYZING KENYA’S FUTURE BY STUDYING KENYA’S PAST; LANCASTER HOUSE III AND THE CRISES OF OCTOBER
1963. Robert M. Maxon.

As Kenya’s
political elite grapple with the aftermath of the2007 election, the development and implementation of a new constitution for the
nation has become a top priority. In this process, the question of
whether a federal/devolved constitutional order is more appropriate for the
country’s future than the current unitary system looms very large.
The issue of the appropriateness of a majimbo or utaguzi constitutional order
is hardly a new one, however. The issue marked Kenya’s political discourse during
the period 1961 to 1964. That discourse revealed divisions among the
political elite as manifested in the stands of the two main political parties
of the time, KADU and KANU. The former’s pro-majimbo stance was reflected
in the self government constitution that became operative on 1 June 1963.
The desire of KANU, in control of the government, for basic changes in that
constitution prior to independence provoked twin crises at the Third Lancaster
House constitutional conference in October. First KADU and then KANU
threatened violence and dissolution of the conference if the party’s
constitutional wishes were not accepted by the British government. Although the
twin crises were surmounted, the threat of violent action and the means used
defuse the crises hold important lessons for future constitution-making. Kenya moved peacefully to independence in
December 1963, but the legacy of Lancaster House III continues to cast a large
shadow over the process of reaching consensus on an appropriate constitution
for Kenya’s
ethnically divided populace.

Kenyans have an
identity crisis and are trapped in labels assigned to them by the British. We
need to revisit our identity labels. As one African chief said, when told of a
new name for his people, "dogs are named by their masters, free men name
themselves." After discussing the labels, I will then consider several
models of ethnic bargaining (drawing upon the work of the late Prof Donald
Rothchild) in terms of whether or not they would be compatible with the kind of
society we wish to have in Kenya.
I'll conclude with suggestions of initiatives that must be taken at the
national, regional, and local level in order to have the national community we
thought we had until "things fell apart," following allegations of
rigging in the December, 2007 general elections in Kenya.

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A GEOGRAPHIC
ANALYSIS OF SOCIOECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN KENYA: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE
COUNTRY’S FUTURE. Kefa M Otiso.

Kenya exhibits significant
regional socioeconomic inequalities despite the country’s commitment to
regional equity since independence. In this paper, I explore the spatial
distribution of socioeconomic wellbeing in the country, causes of such
inequality, and the implications of these geographic inequalities for the
country’s future

On
December 27, 2002, Kenyans elected Mwai Kibaki to be third president of the
republic. In his acceptance speech, he promised to “do things different “than
his predecessor Daniel arap Moi. By all accounts, his presidential and managerial
style and agenda was different than that of President Moi. Although much work
has been done in the area of leadership, studying presidential managerial
styles is not well-developed in African studies. The present paper provides a
tentative inventory of presidential management of the Kenyan polity.
Specifically, it represents a need to understand the president as a manager of
the country’s economic, political, and social life. The question, then, is; was
he different than his two predecessors? The paper reflects on critical
variables that account for the differences observed.

There is notable progress in the application of geospatial information
technologies (GITs) for urban practices in Kenya. While GIT applications in
cities are becoming a reality, so too is the absence of the technical expertise
and infrastructure necessary to support their use in smaller towns.
Consequently, the creation of urban geospatial databases has tended to reside
in the central government, large municipalities, and other funded projects. In
these practices, the locus of attention has been the observable and
quantifiable phenomena while the experiential component by the local
communities has remained peripheral to these digital spatial databases.
This paper employs a participatory GIS conceptual framework to examine the
sustainable use of GITs in smaller towns in Kenya. The study involves building
a GIS for Athi River
town, a peri-urban community of Nairobi, Kenya. The Athi
River GIS includes data on land cover, land use, hydrology, and topography,
social and physical infrastructure. To augment the conventional GIS, community
local knowledge is integrated as an information layer in the form of group
mental mapping, focus group discussions, GPS-based transect walks, social
histories of exclusion, oral narratives of land use, and relevant archival
material. The study reveals that: 1) while GITs present a valuable platform for
the analysis of urban quality of life, they have certain limitations in smaller
towns and; 2) a participatory GIS offers an alternative methodology whereby
community local knowledge is integrated into a GIS as an information layer. The
methodology is innovative, culturally sensitive, relatively inexpensive and
locally sustainable.

Since the beginning
of the 1990s Kenya
has undergone sustained activism for democratization to engender good
governance as a prerequisite for socio-economic development. Basic to the idea
of good governance in is the issue of political accountability rooted in the
belief that effective government depends on the legitimacy derived from
broad-based participation, fairness, and accountability of the governors to the
governed. Yet despite a two-decade protracted process of activism for
democratization, state structures in Kenya remain more or less the same
authoritarian structures inherited at independence in 1963. What factors
account for this eventuality? This paper focuses on this question and argues
that this eventuality is a consequence of the stalled constitutional review
process. Utilizing both primary and secondary data, the paper seeks to explain
this in terms of the bifurcated nature of the pro-democracy movement in Kenya
between the political class and civil society; the instrumental motivations of
actors in both realms; as well as the contradictory role of external actors.
The main thesis of the paper is that without constitutional engineering that
must be broad-based and inclusive for it to assume some semblance of
autochthony, democratization in Kenya
will remain in peril with its attendant crisis of political instability. This
is because across the space of time and place, political stability, a
prerequisite for social economic growth and development, is a function of a
broad-based national consensus on constitutive fundamentals of state that
constitute the social contract between state and society.

Could there ever be
a de-colonized body of knowledge that is itself not colonized and ultimately
colonizing? How, precisely, could the suffocating galaxies of Euro-Western ways
of knowing, worldviews, and philosophies of teaching/learning be effectively dislodged
without reproducing bodies of knowledge that are, in the end, themselves,
colonized and colonizing? Could a project of this nature and scope be
undertaken without also falling into the equally colonizing mindset — of
commemorating the unmistakably diminishing influence and authority of
indigenous African communal heritage? And, finally, beyond the repeated calls
for the need to actively return-back to the cumulative (collective) genius of
Africa’s village lore, are there other alternative ways of reconstituting a
more flexible, in step-with-the-times, regenerating of minds, of souls, and of
structures in Africa? These, and kindred,
questions will be fully addressed in this paper.

This paper explores
the diverse ways that Tanzanian women traders negotiate their business in the
most harsh condition in the hands of Kenya and Tanzania border police,
based on ethnographic research with three women traders in Kilimanjaro and
Arusha in Tanzania.
Drawing on the concept of a ‘boarder crossing’, I show how the effects of
economic globalization and gender inequalities intersect with callous treatment
and groundless illegalization of women’s trade activities on two borders -
Taveta in Kilimanjaro and Namanga in Arusha Tanzania. Using the notion of
‘performativity’, I analyze how women actively reconfigure their lives in the
current neoliberal economy regardless of inhuman treatment from Kenya
and Tanzanian police forces.

Early
this year Kenya, for a long
time a place of entry and departure for international officials dealing with
crises in Somalia, Rwanda, and Sudan, was on the verge of
collapse. At once, the country became emblematic of what is wrong, what could
go wrong, with Africa. In another world,
another time, the events that informed Kenya this time around would have
been seen as the usual business of Africans killing fellow Africans. This is,
indeed, the first line of argument the Western Press took in its assessment of
these events. Yet, as violence spiraled and gathered momentum, the search for
solutions led to the ultimate question: What, in the first place, was the cause
of the murderous chaos? Explanations ranging from claims that the December 27
Presidential Elections had been rigged in favor of the incumbent, to simmering
“tribal” animosities in this mosaic of 40-plus nationalities, to what is now
being described as “historical injustices” were proffered and thoroughly
debated in streets, in pubs, and in the media. All in all, while the first
explanation has come to be seen as the tipping-point of a storm that had long
been in the making, the other two, “tribalism” and “historical injustices”, are
about Kenya’s past—its definition, its meanings, its uses and abuses—and how
this past can be known. Almost
echoing the words of the Spanish-born US philosopher George Santayana who just
over a century ago argued that “Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it,” a Journalist with one of the local daily newspapers in
the country put his finger on the problem when he perceptively pointed out that
the “challenge for the Kenyan situation is that we need to ask ourselves how we
want to deal with the past.” But what exactly does this mean? Why is the past
so central to the present, to the future? Is it, simply put, because by
learning about it we in the present avoid the mistakes and foibles of our
forefathers and thus chart out a sane and secure future for our children? The
immediacy with which these questions have been raised, and variously answered,
in different parts of the world since the end of WWII draw our attention to how
an understanding of human tragedies of the past century is crucial to
humankind’s efforts at stemming similar occurrences in our own times and
beyond. This, in individual countries and across the world, is about how we not
only learn about the past, but also how its checkered meanings are deployed and
redeployed to present and future needs. The purpose of this paper, broadly
defined, is to examine Kenya’s
past in the light of the proposed Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation
Commission. Among the questions the paper seeks to answer are: What place does
the country’s past have in the understanding of the agonizing and inescapable
trauma occasioned by the recent post-election violence? What are the
connections between history, political transition and human rights? If history
is not to be repeated, what is it in history that could have been different?
These questions are about conflict between agency
and structure, and they speak
directly to the issue of responsibility
for violence in the past. Thus, the paper is concerned with how, first, the
proposed TJRC is going to confront the past—is it a forum for Kenyans to come
to terms with, or work through, the past? Second, what
does the TJRC entail for history, its civics, and for movements for
participatory democracy in the country?

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A
STRONG INTERNAL MARKET, A SOLUTION TO KENYA’S ECONOMIC, POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL
WOES:Benard Manyibe.

As
Kenya matures as a nation, it is struggling politically, economically, and
socially. It is recommendable that to meet these challenges it has plan for the
way forward popularly known as Vision 2030 that aims at industrializing the
country by the year 2030. However, to achieve this status means a lot of work
has to be done. In this paper I argue that for Kenya to achieve the goals of
Vision 2030, it has to intentionally build a market that would sustain
meaningful industrialization.Some of
the alternatives available include engaging its neighbors in instituting
governance that promotes and supports dynamic market forces which would feed
the envisioned industries with materials and manpower as well as absorb
industrial products. The other option is to rely on the more developed markets
of the west.The most important
alternative though is to develop a strong internal market. This market would
not only ensure a strong economy but also a cohesive and tolerant society that
would entrench the country’s nationhood which the current political mood
indicates is at stake.

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PROFILE
OF OLDER PEOPLE IN KENYA: WHAT HAVE WE PROVIDED TO THEM AND WHAT HAVE WE
DEPRIVED THEM? Samuel M. Mwangi.

Societal
aging is fairly a recent phenomenon across the world.While historically select individuals have
made it to old age, it is only in the last 40-50 years that we have seen aging
nations. Kenya is entering the demographic transition as the population of
older Kenyans continues to increase. In 1989, there were about just over one
million Kenyans age 60 and above. This population had increased to 1.3 million
in 1999 and in 2007 there were about 1.5 million older Kenyans who constituted
about 4 percent of the total population. By 2020, this population is projected
to be slightly over 2 million and it will be followed by a drastic increase to
8.2 million by 2050. Today in Kenya 42 percent of the population is below the
age of 14. Like other nations, Kenya will face a number of challenges as it
ages. Such changes underscore the importance for preparing for an aging
society. This paper will examine the general outlook of older Kenyans in regard
to their economic, social and health statuses. It will be argued that the bulk
of ageing issues that affect and afflict older Kenyans for the most part have been
overlooked. Although available evidence shows that the government and civil
society have come to the realization that mechanisms for addressing older
people’s predicaments need to be put in place, this realization is undermined
by the marginalization of these people that has created a subculture of poor
older adults.

The
ability to generate and utilize alternative energy in rural areas is key to
sustainable development in Kenya. This presentation will explore the potential
of bio-fuel as an avenue for rural economic development in Kenya and as one way
for the country to meet its Millenium Development Goals. Experience from other
countries in Africa and elsewhere shows that food and biofuel production can be
successfully integrated.One of my goals
is to see how this can be done in Kenya.